VoteAmerica's 2021 California recall election SMS program
Evaluation memo prepared by Walter May, and reviewed by Jennifer Lauv and Professor Christopher Mann.
Purpose of program
VoteAmerica Action Fund ran a text messaging (Peer-to-Peer SMS) campaign aimed at getting potential voters in 10 counties who automatically received mail ballots to cast their ballot. 854,739 potential voters were sent SMS messages. 654,628 potential voters were sent 2 waves, and 200,111 additional potential voters were sent a single message to test the difference between one and two messages. An RCT was conducted to determine the effect of being sent a text message reminder and the effect of being sent a second text message reminder on voter turnout.
Research question(s)
- What was the effect of being sent a text message reminder on voter turnout?
- What was the effect of being sent an additional message beyond the first one on voter turnout?
Key findings
The results of the analysis suggest that the program was effective with respect to increasing voter turnout among those who were sent text messages. Specifically, the results indicate a highly statistically significant treatment-on-treated effect: those who were sent at least one message were 0.40 percentage points more likely to vote than those in the control group.
